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"Hey, come see, it's the fairy tale artist!" The Cultural Center down the street has art exhibits and art classes, and while I have no time to take or teach the latter I like coming by and seeing what they're hanging. But it was while I was trying to enroll my daughter in their baby music class that one of them teased out of me that I draw. "You draw?" "A little," I say, mindful that I no longer do as much as I used to. A few hours a week is definitely the smallest slice of my life right now. "What do you draw?" I grin. "I paint dragons and wizards. Fairy tales." "Oh, you must bring some of it for us to see!" "All right," I say. So I do. I bring Willow and Hadara, the Bone Dancer, Morgan and the Calligrapher. "Illustrative work," one of the women says. I nod. "For fantasies." They are delighted. They'd like a showing, or for me to teach or give a talk. I think an art exhibit sounds fun and promise to come back to talk to the curator next week. On the walk back home, I remember days when I would have been sure that they wouldn't have been interested in my long-eared lords and furry ladies. I wouldn't have been sure what to call myself. "I do science fiction and fantasy art" is an instant ticket to a tiny niche. But fairy tales have always belonged to everyone. Wise witches, wicked sorcerers, genies, talking animals, people who can fly, magic swords, golden looms... spaceships and little green men, all of it. There's not a human alive who isn't heir to all these things. Why assume that people who might never pick up a novel from the SF/F section wouldn't like fantasy? It makes no sense. So now I'm "that fairy tale artist"... one of thousands of people who have put pencil to paper to that purpose. No niches; no assumptions. I think that'll be my line in the future. "I illustrate fantasies." What excellent company that puts me in! Stardancer Home.Tags: art, philosophy
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Samples from Sketchbook 18 In most every "decade" of sketchbooks, there's some milestone, some event that stands out among the ten. Sometimes it's fairly minor, a blip on the radar. And sometimes, it's huge. In the 11-20 decade I was in college... and by the later part of that set, I was far enough advanced in my studio art degree to start taking art history courses. The Gothic, Renaissance and Modern Art History classes were staggering. Sketchbook 18 in particular is full of long, patient drawings, done in class, out of class...everywhere. There's a lot of stippling. A lot of brush-work. A lot of inking. Looking at Sketchbook 11 and then Sketchbook 18, you'd think years had passed. I happen to think Sketchbook 18 rocks, and I would love to have more of it online! If you'd like to, too, here's the button. If you want to be acknowledged as sponsoring the scans, remember to leave me a comment! Stardancer Home.Tags: 100 sketchbook retrospective, art, donations
Current Mood: whoot!
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IGNORANCE
M.C.A. Hogarth
aunera [ au NEH rah ], (adjective) — Both a color (emerald green, very lush and deep, with a slight tint of blue) and a description of alien things, things that are not Ai-Naidari, from people and worlds to emotions and thoughts.
It was good to be stripped on the market's pedestal... good to feel the crowd deepening around me. They were willing to look, to accept my public penance. Behind me, Shame tied me fast and a sigh rippled through the watchers... and we were one, oh at last, after my thoughtless arrogance had separated us, Noble from people. My head sank low enough to make the nape of my neck visible, and their gazes on me were a caress.
When something disturbed that communion I raised my face. Shying away, the watchers had left a corridor through their ranks all the way to my Regal, accompanied by a figure far too short for any Ai-Naidari, and cloaked—aunerai?
( Read more... )
Donate.
The Admonishments of Kherishdar. Tags: ai-naidar, excerpts, the admonishments of kherishdar
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• Re-reading Shell has made me think I'm going in the wrong direction with the packaging. I might do something far more understated. From the distance of a few years, it's easy to think of it as Dlane's book... but it's Thenet's, and the eperu aesthetic is austere. I'll have to do more new work for it, but a lot less than I was planning, which will mean the book will come out faster. • Still trying to figure out a good way to scan oversized art. Kinko's has an oversize scanner, but the last scans I got back from them had digital artifacts. I ended up stitching " Hadara and the Sun King" together by hand, which was... not... fun. *sigh* Getting a scan of " Willow" I can actually print has so far been a non-starter. • Right now " Just Because (I Love You)" is on the painting board because the paper I want to put the baby+dragon piece is in the mail. Hopefully it'll come soon because I'm utterly intimidated by " Just Because." That order also contains replacement brushes for the three that I've destroyed finishing these last two paintings... yes, I'm still trying to get a good scan for the postcards to send the people who sponsored those brushes, and they're already being replaced! *shaking head*• I'm just now going through sketchbooks 11-20 for the Retrospective... if you want me to scan more pictures from this set, you can do that here. Remember to tell me your LJ Name so I can list you as a sponsor! • Also, I've figured out the third illustration for the Admonishments and am trying to put that together now. I can tell it's going to be late, though. It's complicated. • Related to all this scanning/archiving of artwork... I found somehow that I got water into one of the portfolios I use to store old originals, which ruined my original of "Ragna." I need to get more of these things out of my house before I destroy them. :P • Finally, ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) arielstarshadow has cracked the top five commenter list, and in doing so has asked so many questions or made so many leading statements that I'm just vibrating with the need to write or draw things. Comments are love! Stardancer Home.Tags: art, books, writing
Current Mood: sigh
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